Various Mailbags

[Jorn Barger <barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu>]

Vickie-- there was an experimental group in the early 70s called Henry Cow
that featured a singer named Dagmar along with Peter Blegvad, I'm guessing
it might be her.  I remember a terrific song about hats that went:
  "Can hats favor fire?
   Can a hat aspire to higher things?
   Can one pit hats against vicious things?
   Pernicious things?
   Liquorish fish with wings?
   ...Can the wet attract a hat?"   &c

All of Henry Cows albums had a strange big sock on the cover knitted out of
metallic thread, if memory serves.


Speaking of women artists, I'd like to say a few words in defence of Karen
Finley who got a pretty raw deal here a few weeks ago-- it's true she strips
naked and screams obscenities and rubs foodstuffs all over her body, but
it's all in service of a very sincere Dreaming-like spiritual ideal.  KF calls
herself a devout pagan, which sounds damn good to me, and I've seen her go
into trance-states in which she expresses very deep and profound human pains...
After all, the great 20th century social experiment is at heart an experiment
with sexuality, and it's an artist's duty to probe the dark recesses...


Now IED, you unfriendly ghost, you say
>Of all the artists in the world working today, Kate is probably the
>artist for whom such comparisons of relative "quality" afford the
>_least_ insight to the listener making the comparison.

What sort of insight are you talking about?  Why is this different for Kate?
Are there artists not working today for whom it's equally true?
I think we all make reference to an implicit "silly sonic beauty contest"
every time we choose to play one album rather than another, or to recommend
one over another to those unsaved souls who've only just heard of Kate Bush.

you say too
>...(why would the mere
>act of changing the playing order of music you already know very well
>lend any significant new quantity of objectivity to your judging?)...
but don't we all approach a familiar sequence with some degree of a numbing
anticipatory 'set' that the element of surprise might help overcome?
In this case especially I was made aware of a regular sinking feeling when
those TSW songs came on... (If it was 20 below yesterday and it's ten below
today, you might say it's warmed up quite a bit, but if it goes from -20
to 40 above to -10 you get a lot more objective perspective!)


my news server was down most of last week.  did I miss any other good flames?

yours in love and anger,

jorn